Something I threw together a couple of days before registering - I'm painfully aware that it could well be viewed as a carnivalian combination of dog + mirror + (averted) ice-nine (all topics I've since learned we've got about six billion of), so thought I might as well post it here for pointers. If people think it's suitably original I'll put it in - otherwise I'll consider it a learning experience for SCP writing style. The general theme behind it was something that would pose a security threat to the SCP Foundation specifically and pose some containment challenges without being a terrifying fleshbeast. It's not really horrorific (apart from some mild Eye Scream) but I note a lot of Safe SCPs generally aren't, instead just being curios that the Foundation doesn't want at large in the outside world. The designation was free when I put it together, but now seems to be reserved, so if this does end up going up it may need to be changed.

http://scpsandboxwiki.wikidot.com/sregansandbox1
Points I'm seeking feedback on:
- Formatting: I've tried to base it on established entries but I'm hoping to get feedback on whether it feels suitable SCP-y.
- Class: is Safe actually right? In the 'backstory' I have it upgraded to Euclid as the contagious potential of SCP-1151-2 is discovered then downgraded again with new procedures; but the guidelines suggest that if you can't walk away from it and be sure there'll be no more problems it's not Safe. If SCP-1151-1 were turned loose it could cause a lot of damage (glass turned into SCP-1151-2 is effectively opaque, so it's likely to cause more crashes like the one that led to its containment).
- Tone: suitably authentic? The italic snarky comments by administrators seem to be fairly common on the site. Hopefully the Foundation takes a justifiable stance on containing SCP-1551-2; Incident 1551-████-1 could be toned down if people think it's too harsh - though part of the idea for this SCP is that the worst thing about it is what it makes the Foundation do to protect itself.
- Someone with a better grasp of physics than myself might be able to tell me whether there's a formula that allows conversion between albedo and gloss units, as right now the threshold equivalent is more or less a guess.

I'm confused by this, twice. Why would the subject retain vision? If he retained his vision, why would he pretend otherwise?

Probably too many addenda; I think the number of them, and the amount of name-checking of other SCPs, is likely to draw downvotes. And then a long experiment log on top of that. I didn't see any problems with the formatting, but after a certain point, I'd question whether you're adding enough new information to justify the extra reading you're asking the audience to do.

My instinct is to say it should be Euclid, because not all of the 1551-2 has been contained and there's no way of knowing where it is or whether it will resurface and cause another outbreak, but I'm uncertain.

I was relatively certain that "gloss units" was something you'd made up and was going to tell you it sounded stupid. But it's a real thing that sounds stupid. So go on with your bad self. I don't think albedo and gloss are directly convertable; albedo is about how much incident light gets absorbed vs. reflected (in any fashion), and gloss is about how much incident light produces a specular (mirror-like) reflection, which is more specific. It would be theoretically possible to have a low-albedo object with a high gloss (like polished obsidian), a low-albedo object with low gloss (charcoal), a high-albedo object with high gloss (porcelain) or a high-albedo object with low gloss (like white construction paper).

One question I was left with was whether finely ground affected glass would be able to propagate the effect. You say individual atoms of affected liquids don't continue to infect other surfaces, but how large of a particle does it take? If it's possible for a glass fragment to propagate the effect even when the image it displays is too small to be resolvable, then you should get some people out there to vacuum the street and remove any sediment from the storm drains at the crash site, and for many meters downstream of the crash site, lest a beady-eyed rat should get a glimpse or something.

Thanks for the feedback! Matt vs matte appears to be a British vs American English (and possibly a British dialectal) thing; the SCP was located in Sector-25 (hence the 'ise' and 'ised' endings) but I agree that to avoid unwitting comedy with the several real people called Matt Black that the American English spelling should be used.

Tried to clarify the blindness thing - the assumption would be that having your eyes turned into 1151-2 would render you blind (since there's now a picture in front of your pupil), but since it absorbs the light like a black body light falling on the retina is still processed by the eye. I've redrafted this a bit as well as throwing in a mention that the subject tried to use the fact that everyone else thought they were blind to try and escape the facility. In my original idea draft the subject just neglected to inform the research staff he'd given them a case of 1151-2 too out of spite; I'll revert to that if people think it's implausible as it stands.

I've eliminated ~60% of the addenda that have to do with requests to test it with other SCPs (I admit I got carried away searching through all the SCPs with 'mirror' in them), leaving only the more comic ones; though I thought it might be useful to mention SCP-944 as possibly the worst thing that could get contaminated by 1151-2, which requires the lead-up from another mirror-based SCP ('no. NO.'). I also did like the one-off useless experiment with SCP-1620, though I'll remove that too if people think it's too name-droppy.

Still unsure about Safe/Euclid - from my reading it wouldn't stop being Safe if you learned there was more of it out there you hadn't yet secured (as what you have is still secure), but 1151-1 is arguably a pain in the rear end to contain/transport between facilities, etc.

Thanks for raising the issue of the glass dust, which I hadn't considered at all - finely ground glass would definitely propagate the effect if you were to examine it through a microscope - I've included mention in the article that much of the ground glass has been recovered and melted into a single chunk (shamelessly pilfering your wording to do so :) ). Single atoms don't affect other surfaces because they aren't high-res enough to see the reflection, but they remain 'active' and if you were to find a way to distinguish them from uncontaminated atoms and stick them back together again they would still display the image (and saying that I wonder why they haven't just melted all the glass together into a cube and spray-painted that…).

I had another thought, which might complicate your thing enough that you should just ignore it: reflectivity of glass windows and one-way mirrors depends on the relative amounts of illumination on the different sides of the glass. A shop window during the day, when there's more light outside than there is in the shop, is reflective; the same window at night, when there's more light inside, is transparent. (I mean, it's equally transparent and reflective in both cases: it's just that whether you perceive a reflection or not depends on whether you're on the brighter side of the glass: at night, the reflection is a reflection of mostly-darkness; during the day, the transmitted light is overwhelmed by the reflected light.) A possible implication is that transparent objects that become instances of 1151-2 are potentially infective from both sides, even when people can't actually see the reflection, and consequently most of the people who were in the shop at the time of the crash are probably also infected. If you want to disregard that, feel free: I mention it only on the chance that it might be useful to you.

Thanks and good spot - I did have the idea that transparent materials which become 1151-2 are subsequently opaque (because they now behave like black bodies). If there's light falling on both sides of the glass, people on both sides can see the footage. If light is only falling on one side, people on that side can see the footage - to people on the other side the glass is completely opaque and they're in darkness. I haven't decided whether the shop window became 1151-2 any significant length of time before it broke, though (probably just flashed it for a split-second before the car crashed; if there was no internal lighting in the shop it would just have gone black). A transparent surface would only need the reflection seen in it once, from one angle, to become 1151-2.

People can't be infected per se - reflective surfaces on their body, including their eyes, can become contaminated, but only if someone else sees the reflection in them, so short-term exposure or exposure when no-one else is around won't result in contamination (perhaps if you have REALLY shiny nails…).

Update: By all rights if your eyes go, everything connected through the soft squishy wet bits should also be contaminated; this is something I would probably have to ignore. I'd probably have to declare that the optic nerve is insufficiently reflective for 1151-2 to treat it as part of the same thing.

1) This is long and wordy. After reading it I'm convinced this can be heavily trimmed and would benefit greatly from doing so.

2) A dog is on the list of cliche scps. Doesn't mean you can't do it but I would imagine picking another animal would not be hard to do and would avoid some downvotes.

3) What is SCP-1551? I see a -1 and a -2 but no base item. from what I can see the dog (SCP-1551-1) should be simply SCP-1551 and reflective surfaces 1551-2.

4) Seems to be several references to other SCPs in the article. A somewhat funny aspect of this site is the discouragement of cross-references. You might get some harsh judgement over these references.

1.) I've cut this down - probably still a bit overweight, so I'll take a second pass at it shortly. Dropped the alternative albedo reading (I gather it's not as relevant in any case), dropped a lot of waffle about what happens when Tarquin's unconscious, etc.

2.) Yup; was hoping the combo platter effect might reduce animosity to it. If you think it's likely to be downvoted out of hand I'll move onto some different ideas. A different animal could work but would rather spoil the key aspect of how it was first picked up and contained, including why there's a large amount of glass already in Foundation care. Do we have many raccoons? That would keep the origin story, though containment procedures would have to be updated with the idea that this is a wild animal; plus we'd lose the mystery of the owner, the name, etc.

3.) Amended, though this does tend to make it a little less clear (I think the suggestion to flip the primary designation to SCP-1551-2 would have more weight now).

4.) Removed 'em all :( Shame, as I thought it helped tie it into the world. I suppose a lot of existing SCPs aren't stored in Sector-25, so perhaps it wouldn't be realistic to send samples for experimentation all over the world.

Made another revision, cutting down the main article further and fixing a rather glaring issue whereby I use two different SCP designations :( I've updated the OP with the new link. Since I seem to have spent rather more time on this than I originally intended, I now need to decide whether I should go ahead on the main site and see what happens or trash it and move onto the next idea I had (which for reference is a moving mini-roundabout with anomalous gravitational qualities). Alternatively, it's been suggested I could redraft with a different animal - possibly a raccoon. Anyone have any guidance?

do not go on the main site yet. This will not survive as is, if not primarily for the fact it is still to long and wordy. Keep trimming it down and remember it takes some time to create a good article.

In hopes of getting a better idea for future articles I've taken another pass at this. The main article's under 1,500 words now; I've cut out most of the discussion about using it as a communications system with other facilities, almost everything about the previous owner, the description of the enclosure, mention of the SCP Foundation tracker chip, an experiment and all but two addenda. Oh, and I've taken out the glossmeter link :)

Thought it made a good conclusion to the Incident 1151-1 story, but agree it's expendable. I've cut it and rewritten Incident 1151-1 so that's when they stop using D-class subjects with 1151 directly. Any other pointers?

Fantastic trimming job. I still think you should trim a little more, but it is coming along nicely. I see no obvious things that could be cut anymore.

To help with the illusion of length I recommend placing your paragraph about recovery under new heading "Recovery:" or "Recovery Log:" This will make the description look shorter which would help.

I don't think the experiment log adds anything and probably should be dropped. Your description covers anything learned in the experiment log. You could shorten your article by moving details from the description into the experiment log though.

Thanks for all the help - went on the IRC last night and got some great pointers. I've added a new heading for recovery as you suggest and made some further minor trimmings - got rid of an in retrospect dumb bit where I imply that the worst part of having the world's oceans turned into an SCP would be the threat to Sector-25's security procedures :( I've furthermore deleted some stuff that's already explained in the log, like why SCP-1552-1 is largely covered in paint. The log itself I've cut down again but would like to retain as it does rebut a lot of fridge logic stuff. It now references the Incident Report rather than redacting something that is largely uncensored in the main entry; also banished the complete non-sequitur that the researcher is using D-class test subjects because it's a security risk. Accordingly experiments 1-4 now just reference 'the subject' - D-class are only brought in for experiment 5 where there was a foreseeable risk of one or both of the subjects becoming contaminated.

One of the first comments was that the experiment log was unnecessary :) I've since got rid of it and integrated the relevant bits back into the article. The Professor's rant came under fire for feeling unprofessional and too 'lolfoundation' - any suggestions?